Dr. Douglas Austen

The 2006 Schuylkill River Watershed Congress last week attracted nearly 200 participants eager to learn more about how they can protect and restore their watersheds.

Dr. Doug Austen, Executive Director of the Fish & Boat Commission, provided the keynote address focused on the need to do more to restore habitat and to connect young people to the outdoors and natural resources.

“Anglers and boaters contribute over $3 billion to Pennsylvania’s economy every year,” said Dr. Austen. “Healthy habitat, leads to healthy fish, which leads to healthy people and a healthy economy, it’s all connected.”

Austen pointed to the fact that over $70 million in tourism and recreation dollars is lost each year because of streams and watershed degraded by abandoned mines and acid mine drainage.

The Growing Greener watershed restoration and bond issue programs, dam removals, the Commissions’ habitat improvement grant and restoration programs and a new state Wildlife Action Plan provide some of the tools needed to improve habitat.

Austen also pointed to the National Fish Habitat Initiative, that he chairs, as a new initiative to get public agencies, nonprofit groups and private businesses together to form a new partnership to restore and protect habitat areas.

On April 24 members of the Initiative will meet in Washington, D.C. for a “Casting Call” to visit Congressional leaders and other decision makers to educate them on the urgent need to protect fish habitat across the United States.

In addition to funding, Austen said the challenges for the future include doing more water quality monitoring to assess the health and progress of watershed restoration and using new technology to assess and prioritize habitat improvement projects.

Austen said one initiative the Fish & Boat Commission is planning involves a Conservation Mapping Program that will put all habitat, watershed and stream restoration projects on one GIS system so resource agencies, watershed groups and others can see who’s doing what, where in order to prioritize future projects.

The agenda for the Congress included lots of helpful presentations on topics ranging from invasive and native species, watershed restoration, watershed group organizational development, POWR’s water data system, riparian buffers, dam removal, agricultural controls and case studies of successful watershed projects.

The Schuylkill Watershed Congress is organized by the Delaware Riverkeeper and supported by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and more than 40 nonprofit, government and businesses interested in watershed protection and restoration.

3/10/2006